1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to three-dimensional simulated environments or “virtual worlds”, and more particularly, to a system and method of searching for a three-dimensional object (“virtual world object”) existing across multiple virtual worlds.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The only way to efficiently locate a particular piece of information on a large network of information is to utilize a search engine. An Internet search engine is designed to search the World Wide Web for web-pages, images and other types of information. Internet search engines gather information by accessing web sites and indexing their contents, a process sometimes referred to as “crawling” since early search engines would index a web site and follow links from that web site to other web sites. Google™, for example, is a well-known search engine that accepts a textual input and provides a search button. Pressing the search button initiates a search and links to information matching the input are displayed.
Many patents describe and improve upon retrieving, indexing, querying, and presentation of information on a large network. U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,106 teaches using natural language to query a search engine. U.S. Pat. No. 6,381,607 teaches a technique for indexing of information for better retrieval. U.S. Pat. No. 6,377,945 teaches a method of data retrieval. U.S. Pat. No. 6,480,837 describes the use of weighted search results to improve the presentation of search results. However, these inventions all operate within the conventional search-engine architecture described.
Conventional search engine designs operate on the presumption that discovered contents will remain in the same location over time. In essence, traditional search engine fodder exists in two-dimension because it can be located using a single address, or a Uniform Resource Identifier (“URI”) as proposed in Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”), Proposed Standard RFC 3986 that is a prerequisite to traditional search engine operation.
A virtual world is a three-dimensional environment created by a computer and multiple virtual worlds may collectively form a universe of the virtual worlds. A virtual world may depict a purely fictional setting existing only in the mind of its creator as well as a real-world setting. A virtual world contains three-dimensional graphical objects, collectively known as virtual world objects, represented by characteristics such as a primitive and a texture. The primitive defines the object's shape and the texture is an image wrapped around the primitive to give it a realistic appearance. Other characteristics of the objects include video, audio and executable program code.
While real world objects have three dimensions, the virtual world objects, however, exist in six dimensions. The first three dimensions identify a virtual world object's coordinates within a virtual world. The fourth-dimension governs time, as virtual world objects are capable of movement. The fifth-dimension is necessary to identify a specific instance, or clone, of the virtual world object, since it may exist in multiple locations at the same time. The sixth and final dimension identifies the specific virtual world within the universe of virtual worlds. The complexity of movement and parallel existence of virtual world objects make it impossible to be assigned a persistent static reference such as a URI. As such, searching in six dimensions is beyond the capability of existing search engine technology because that technology is grounded in the two-dimensional world of static URI references. It would be advantageous to provide functionality for locating a virtual world object in light of its complicated existence.